


Styx

by Somnifery (somnifery)



Series: Alcione [1]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Destiny 2, Eventual Romance, F/M, Gen, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Slow Burn, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-09-14
Packaged: 2019-07-07 19:46:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 7,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15915036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somnifery/pseuds/Somnifery
Summary: The Red Legion has taken the City, and the Light has gone. On Mars, a strike goes wrong as Ghosts go dark, and a grievously wounded Guardian is abandoned to the care of an Awoken medic who has been adrift since the Taken War. With little hope of the Light returning, Tamzin and Kedric struggle to find meaning in the midst of endless war.





	1. Chapter 1

Loch is dripping down her visor.

Tam felt the system stop spinning when she saw his Ghost fall, dark and dead, plummeting onto the Hive detritus like so much scrap metal.

If it had been only a few moments later, if the Knight had fired sooner—

But the projectile hit Loch precisely in the chest as his Ghost fell dead at his feet, and then he was nothing at all, nothing but gore sprayed across Tamzin’s clothes. Shrapnel from his kit punches a series of holes in her helmet, her cheek, her chest and side.

Strangely, she can’t feel the pain. She can’t tell the difference between her breathless horror and the sensation of her suit depressurizing. She can breathe the air, at least, saved by the atmosphere left when humanity had terraformed the planet, long before the Hive came to infest these dead halls.

Tam yanks off her helmet, gasping the thin air, choking back a series of dry heaves as she staggers away from the steaming pile of organs and blood.

The Light is gone. It feels like life itself has been sucked out of her, leaving her drained, fatigued, but there isn’t time to focus on that.

For now, she just has to get them out of here alive.

“Pull out,” she screams, turning wildly in search of her surviving fireteam member. “Gaelen, we have to pull out!”

The Titan is too far ahead to hear her. He’s running headlong to attack a Wizard. Tam snaps her sniper rifle to attention without thought, double-tapping the monster in the head, but it has already swiped a massive claw at Gaelen. The Titan goes flying, slamming into the cavern wall like a ragdoll.

She sprints to him, sliding to shield his prone body with her own as a fresh brood of Thrall emerge from the shadows. A burst of submachine gunfire wards them off, but the clip is soon empty, and Tam moves to push away the last of the swarm with a blast of power.

Nothing happens.

Sharp claws are ripping through the flesh of her face before she fully realizes her mistake.

Her screams as the Thrall overpower her nearly drown out their bloodthirsty howls.


	2. The Healer

He’s been adrift for nearly a year, if he’s counted correctly.

In the outer fringes of the Reef, it’s easy to miss a day or two- A day, or six. Dock at an outpost to refuel and resupply, only to find a month has passed when he’d believed it was only a few weeks.

Kedric keeps the comms on, open channels to dead air, listening to the occasional news from his people who are still trying to hold it all together.

The Queen’s dead. He knows that, at least. He saw the explosion. He helped search the rubble for survivors. He scrubbed the blood of his last patients from the inside of this ship until his hands were raw and the only thing left was the stench of death and burning flesh. Even a bath of acid, countless disinfectant washes, a year’s worth of liquor couldn’t get rid of a scent that lingered only in his mind.

The Reef was falling apart, and he chose to retreat to the solitude of space with his ambulance-class ship and a cache of old world medical texts, as if reading about archaic medicine from the Golden Age and beyond would somehow purge his failures from his mind.

The distress call wakes him from a dead sleep. Something about the edge of desperation in the voice, perhaps- Or the words, the near-senseless babbling of a terrified man, near screaming in the darkness of space.

“Help us,” he cries. “The Light’s gone. Her face-- can’t stop the bleeding. Someone- Mayday, _mayday_ —”

Kedric takes a few deep breaths- Waits for his head to clear from sleep and the aftereffects of bootleg liquor, certain he has to be mishearing.

A Guardian?

He normally wouldn't even think of assisting them. No other ships are near enough to hear the distress call, though, and the Guardian repeats the call, curses and prayers to his Traveler cutting into his messages, the sound of scrabbling as he tries to move something, or someone.

“Guardian,” Kedric cuts into the feed, powering up the engines as he slides into the pilot seat. “Call received. Medical unit responding. Send your coordinates, and do _not_ move the patient if it’s safe to stay where you are.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

Here is what Kedric recalls, when the nights are long and sleep won’t come, and the faint buzz of the engines lulls his mind into memories that ache like a bruise when touched.

The VTOL lands like a dream, despite the ever-sliding sands of Mars. Kedric is out of the hatch before the ramp has fully descended, cursing as the earth slips beneath his feet, propelling him toward the Guardians in something closer to a fall than a run.

She is covered in the dust, a gasping, dying figure coated in red, a halo of blood-blackened earth beneath her. One arm rests at an unnatural angle; the other drapes across her, hand graceful over her heart, fresh crimson spreading between the fingers of her glove.

The Exo hovers over her, uselessly. Kedric thinks he would've stared at her like an idiot until she breathed her last, if he hadn’t responded to the call.

“Move.” He stops just short of actually shoving the Titan aside, crouching over the broken figure and running a hand above her neck and torso. The light of the scanner on his wrist remains green, and he can’t suppress a sigh of relief. No spinal trauma, at least. He picks her up, light and brittle with pain, ignoring the smears of fresh blood on his clothing as her head comes to rest on his shoulder.

“Triage.”

The ship reconfigures at his command. He set her down, making wordless sounds in a vain attempt to comfort as she cries out in pain.  The bed hums softly as it powers up, the soft glow pulsing as it sought her vitals, Kedric found his shears and began hacking through her tattered clothes, shoving each ruined scrap into a bin for biohazardous waste.

The Titan had followed, standing at the entrance to the ship and staring at his back. He set the girl’s lifeless Ghost down, as if he didn’t know what to do with it. Kedric noted that he didn’t discard his own the same way.

“What’s her name?”

“Name? She’s, uh…” The Titan falters, and Kedric realizes he’s struggling to remember. “Warlock. Sniper... Tam. She goes by Tam.”

Class, use in the field, name nothing more than an afterthought. He fails to hide his disdain as he begins to clean the filth from her skin, easing his touch when she cries out, weakly attempting to ward him off with her uninjured hand. Kedric simply catches her wrist, gritting his teeth as Titan speaks loudly over his shoulder, asking if she’s alright.

 _Are you blind_ , he wants to retort, but he bites his tongue instead, stroking the soft skin of her wrist with his thumb in an attempt to soothe her as he eases it back to the table.

“Use the radio,” he commands, jerking his head toward the cockpit. “Try to get ahold of your Tower.”

The nuisance goes, and Kedric takes a deep breath to center himself once more. He may hate the general idea of Guardians, but the girl on his table is a patient now. His patient.

He staunches the most severe bleeding methodically, forcing himself to trust the ship’s readings of her blood pressure as her lips take on a faint tinge of blue. The ship doesn’t have Human blood on hand to transfuse, and her idiot companion is an Exo, bloodless, and thus even more useless than he’d been to begin with. His education certainly hadn’t covered possible contraindications of giving a Human the blood of an Awoken, and he hesitates, scanning the specs on the medical display until he found her blood type.

She will almost certainly die if he doesn't. He has to try.

“The comms are dead.” The damned Exo was back, poking his head out of the cockpit like an uninvited neighbor.

“Keep trying,” Kedric snaps. “Don’t interrupt me again.”

He rubs his face with his hands as the door closes.

“IV and transfusion supplies, please.” The AI is accustomed to his sighed commands, thankfully, and he hears the mechanisms clicking softly until a drawer of IV paraphernalia emerges from the wall.

When he let his hands fall from his face, he finds the Warlock watching him, as well as she can with one unfocused eye.

“Sedative and anesthetic, as well.”

Her heart rate spikes as he says _sedation_. Kedric falters. Even with half of her face torn to shreds, he can see her panic, and he feels a stab of pity.

The narcotics used on Awoken are powerful, but if it will take some of the stress off of her heart, her lungs, it will be worth the risk.

“Don’t be afraid.” What a stupid, useless thing to say, even if it is sincere. “I’m just going to take the pain away. You'll sleep for a while. You’ll wake up again, and the worst will be over. I promise.”

He slips a needle into the crook of her arm with these soft words of comfort, reaching up to place a hand on her hair as she whimpers like a wounded animal. The line connects easily, and the ship is already releasing the medication into her bloodstream.

The Warlock gasps, trying to fight against the sedative, but Kedric keeps stroking her blood-encrusted hair, breathing slowly until her own breaths ease, begin to keep pace.

“There you go, Tam. Don’t fight it, don’t worry...”

Her ice-gray eye finds his own at the sound of his name, unfocused behind her pale lashes. He gives her a soft smile, reassuring, as though he can’t see the Hive infection eating at the edges of her wounds and the bare bone of her skull beneath the gore that had once been her eye.

“That’s it. Just sleep.”

Kedric feels the exhale of surrender, the final release of tension as she sinks into the ether. He closes his own eyes, listening as the monitors even out to a more sustainable baseline.

“... I’ll be here when you wake up.”


	4. Chapter 4

“Hey, hotshot!”

Tamzin grimaces at the nickname, casting a long-suffering look at her Ghost before turning around. The call comes from a devilish looking Hunter, all looks and no substance, giving her that winning smile that can make half the girls in the Tower swoon.

“I have a name, Loch,” she reminds him, but he just reaches out and ruffles her hair.

“Sure you do! Red hot hair, red hot shot. We need a third for a strike, though, Hotshot, do you wanna come along?”

Tam would like to put a red hot shot from her sniper rifle into his chest at close range, but she has a feeling it would ruffle some unwanted feathers in the Vanguard if she did.

“Why, did you usual Warlock get tired of you?” Her voice is dry, and Rho makes a soft whirring sound of disapproval.

“Nah, he’s got a date with some shopgirl, but he didn’t want company.”

She inhales, but her Ghost cuts her off, ruining a perfectly good insult.

“Where to?”

“Mars!”

“I’d rather eat glass,” she informs him.

“--Than miss out!” Rho finishes for her.

“We’re taking off in four hours, then. Happy to have you along!” Loch jogs away again, waving to a Titan she recognizes from his usual squadron.

“Rho,” she growls, hoisting her rifle up as the strap begins to slide down her shoulder. “I told you to stop _doing_ that.”

“You need to be less of a bitch,” Rho informs her, floating just out of reach in anticipation of a smack she’s received more than a few times before this. “They’re being friendly! And besides, strikes are your job. Get out of the Tower, do some work!”

“You should’ve left me dead on Titan.” Tamzin glances around before tossing a minute ball of flame at the Ghost.

Rho dissipates with a shout of protest to avoid scorching her shell.

“ _Less of a bitch,_ ” Tamzin mimics, angrily tucking a piece of hair behind one ear. “You haven’t the slightest _notion_ what sort of bitch I can be.”


	5. Chapter 5

The Titan leaves when he hears that they’re evacuating Earth.

He attempts to look conflicted about leaving. He’s a terrible actor. The Exo knows he ought to stay with his wounded compatriot, but his sense of duty to his Traveler is far stronger than his sense of loyalty to a Guardian he’s known for all of one failed mission.

Kedric makes the choice easier with a lie. He tells the Titan there isn’t room for him on the ship. The Exo looks much too relieved, and Kedric feels he might choke on the bitter words at the tip of his tongue. Instead, he opens the hatch, gritting his teeth painfully until the Titan is gone, taking his sorry excuses and blind faith with him.

 _I’m calling in my favor_ , Kedric types. The message is sent before he can reconsider.

Tam sleeps.

He sits up, as if he can ward away nightmares by standing watch.

He feeds his own nightmares through an earpiece, listening to the screams of Guardians and humans begging open channels for help in the moments before they are slaughtered by the Cabal. He closes his eyes to rest them for a few moments-- A few hours.

The sound of coughing wakes him, a violent transition. 

“It’s alright, Tam. Don’t try to move.” He shouldn’t have fallen asleep, and he’s cursing himself, trying to clear his head.

“Tamzin.” She corrects him. He nearly laughs with shock at her coherence, but her gaze is drifting beyond him, finding the ceiling of the ship before losing focus, her breath coming in shallow pants as the painkiller begins to wear off. “The Light—”

“Breathe,” he commands, glancing at the monitors. It’s nearly time for another dose. A soft light blinks in the corner of the display- a reply to his message.

That can wait, though. Wait until he can make sure she’s stable, not feeling any pain.

He doesn’t want to hear her scream again.

The timer runs out, and she whimpers as the sedative is released into her system once more, the effects washing over her like a wave of nausea.

“The Light?” Tamzin repeats herself, panting with the effort required to speak.

“Temporary.” He lies to her, letting her uninjured hand find his own, dig her nails into his skin. “They’ll sort it out, and it will all be fine."

She struggles, gathering the coherence for one more word. “Rho?”

Her Ghost is silent, dead on the shelf where he’s placed it.

Kedric doesn’t reply, either. He waits, and her grip on his hand weakens with each passing minute until he can easily extract himself.

He licks away the blood drawn by her fingernails, tapping the screen beside him until his inbox appears.


	6. Chapter 6

Kedric waits at the bottom of the ramp, letting the cold air of the Shore nip at his bare face.

It’s the perfect place for a covert rendezvous, he must admit, but his former compatriot looks less than thrilled at the inconvenience as she emerges from the fog.

“I thought you were dead,” she greets him. 

“Don’t sound so disappointed.” He stands, stepping aside to let her onto the ship, grimacing once she can’t see his face. “You like challenges, right?”

The surgeon scoffs, dropping her bag into a chair and beginning to twist her violet hair into a tight bun.

“We’re even after this.”

“Of course.”

 _This_ is a lot to ask, he knows.

She’s already in his ship’s computer, making adjustments to the programming, the medicines she’ll be using, the stats being monitored. He answers her questions, graciously ignoring her disdain at his rudimentary medical efforts as she plots out her procedure for the evening. She puts him to work as a surgical assistant, sterilizing, laying out her tools, preparing the patient for anesthesia.

“What color is her eye?”

Kedric is caught off guard by the question, and his hand falters, the mask slipping from Tamzin’s face.

“Careful,” the surgeon snaps, and he quickly recovers, nervously clearing his throat. “What color?”

“Gray.”

“Damn. All I could get ahold of was blue.”

She pulls a small box from her kit, frowning down at the prosthetic inside. It’s made for Awoken, glowing and bright in a way that would never look at home in a human face. The surgeon glances at the woman on the table, shrugging one shoulder.

“Whatever. It’ll do.”


	7. Chapter 7

Her dreams are vivid.

She’s cutting vegetables in a sterile, silver kitchen.

She lines them up, then cuts, cuts again, sliding the pieces into a pile, repeating the process. The vegetables are replaced with miniscule Fallen, tiny Dregs and Vandals, and she’s cutting off their arms with casual efficiency, ignoring their screams in favor of humming along to some tune on the radio.

“Are you going to enlist?” A woman with black hair is speaking to her, mixing something in a bowl. The first time she glances at her, it’s egg splashed on her apron. The next, it’s blood.

“I can’t fight,” she replies, frowning as one of her cuts goes awry, leaving the screaming dreg with a half-stump. She chops down again, correcting the mistake, only to slide the results into the trash can beside her. “Besides, there are enough soldiers. Nobody wants a chef on some battlefield on Mars.”

She glances out the window at the sound of a child laughing.

Now her companion is burnt away, half a charred skeleton, flesh sloughing off as she keeps mixing, keeps sloshing that blood and ash into a slurry that clings to the bowl.

“I don’t know,” the skeleton sighs, tapping the whisk on the edge of the bowl. “I just feel so useless here.”

“Everyone has to eat, and there’s good money for chefs on Titan,” She shrugs. “Even if there is a war.”

She chops the head off the next Fallen, sucking the gore off her fingers like frosting.


	8. Chapter 8

“Tamzin.”  

He calls to her, softly, brushing the last of the dirt and grime from her hair.

“Tamzin. Wake up.”

She groans as she comes into herself, head aching from the anesthesia, though in a dull, numb sort of way. The painkillers are still in effect, sparing her the full impact of her freshly repaired bones and nerves. Tamzin blinks at the blue man above her, trying to figure out why she can’t see through her left eye. Her face feels… Odd.

“There you are.” He smiles at her, brushing a piece of indigo hair behind one ear. “I’m Kedric. I’ve been taking care of you. How are you feeling?”

“Confused,” she replies, working her jaw as she feels some sort of bandage on her cheek. “... Sore.”

“I’m sure you are. You’ve been out for a while.” He rests a hand on her brow, glancing at a monitor above her. “The Traveler seems to be having some trouble, so you had to have a bit of surgery to patch things up.”

Tamzin registers the strain on those words, but she can’t puzzle out his meaning through the fog in her brain. Some trouble. Surgery. She feels helpless, lying down like this, and the anesthesia is making her feel nauseous.

“Can I sit up?”

“Will you try to do it anyways if I say no?”

“... Probably.”

He shakes his head, but he slips a hand beneath her shoulders anyways, carefully swinging her legs over the edge of the bed as he eases her up.

Tamzin feels her head spin and her gut rebel the moment she’s vertical, and she nearly falls to the floor when she wretches. Kedric keeps hold of her, unable to suppress a loud sigh as she spits bile across the front of his tunic.

“Sorry,” she cringes, wiping her mouth with the back of her unbandaged arm, trying to catch her breath.

“Don’t be.” Kedric simply sighs, producing a piece of gauze and wiping her lips, then his own clothes. “Unless you did it on purpose.”

“Might’ve.”

She has her good hand up, touching the bandage on her face, before he can stop her. The results of her examination don’t seem to set in, though- She seems detached, distracted, and he feels an odd urge to protect her from the reality beyond the fog of her pain and fatigue.

“Tamzin?” He says her name softly, watching her for some sign that she isn’t having a seizure or some other sort of episode.

The girl blinks, pulling herself from her odd reverie before managing to focus on him once more.

“Who are you?”


	9. Chapter 9

She hears the sound of her skull cracking when she falls, and she marvels at the blinding white pain that shoots through her head, lingering, fading to a pulse of agony when no Ghost appears to repair it.

No Ghost. Just the blue man, his light-kissed cheeks blanched beneath his indigo hair as he kneels, speaks to her.

“What are you doing?”

“Running.”

It just confuses him. She doesn’t know how to tell him, if he can’t see it. He just picks her up, stitches her back together, tries to understand what’s wrong.

He can’t.

He gives her platitudes. Puts her back to bed.

He can’t smell the decay. Can’t hear the wet creaking of the Hive, the faint hiss of the Taken, the sounds of monsters rising from the ether to consume her while she has no Light to guard her.

The stars move.

She sleeps, and she cannot sleep. She lies in the half-awake daze of the drugged and the terrified, until she feels something cold, and she pulls away the blanket, and her legs have been consumed by a necrosis that seethes with the glow of Hive crystals. She screams, scrambling away as well as she can with one arm.

She falls.

“Tamzin.”

This time he is already beside her, and she realizes he has put his hand between her head and the floor, for she can’t feel any fresh pain, just the sensation of her legs being devoured, inch by inch.

“Help me.”

“Stop running.”

“I can’t. I can’t. They’re killing me, I have to get it off--”

“Tamzin. It’s only us.”

He lays a hand on her leg, and the corruption retreats from his touch, and the madness ebbs like a tide.

She sees that there is no corruption, that her own blood is painted across his clothing and skin, that he has dark circles under his eyes, bruises like midnight marring skin like a summer sky. The bandage on her leg is soaked once more, stitches torn asunder, a trail of blood making its way to the floor beneath her.

“What… What’s wrong with me?”

Kedric looks unspeakably sad for a moment. He draws her up, pulling her into a gentle but firm embrace, burying his face in her hair. She lets him, resting her cheek on his shoulder, closing her eyes and inhaling the scent of him, letting the pressure of his arms force the fear from her bones.

“The same thing that’s wrong with the rest of us,” he says, his breath stirring her hair. “And I don’t know how to fix myself, either.”


	10. Chapter 10

They had the same argument at least a dozen times, and only now did Kedric realize that she was just letting him  _ think _ he’d won. 

He walks into the fore of the ship to find her limping along the walkway, hand outstretched to support her pained progress. 

“What are you doing?”

Tamzin flinches at the sound of his voice.

“What does it look like?” 

She tries to turn around, but her legs give out, and she falls, making a muffled noise of pain as the stitches in her leg tear open for what Kedric is certain must be the hundredth time. 

“For the sake of my suture supply, if nothing else,  _ please _ stop ripping yourself open and undoing all of my hard work.” 

He sounds more fatigued than angry as he walks over. He carries her back to the exam table, setting her on the edge, sighing at the dust and blood that now stains the oversized shirt she wears. 

“I’m not your Ghost. I can’t put you back together all at once. You’re just going to keep hurting yourself, and it’ll take longer to heal every time you do.”

Tamzin gasps as he tugs the bandages off, but she can’t swallow her misplaced anger. 

She hates that he knows best. She hates that she’s so weak and broken. 

She hates that she likes the way his hands feel, pulling away the bandages on her leg, running over her skin in search of any other fresh injuries, even when he’s being rougher than he ought to be, frustrated at having to close the gash in her leg for the fifth time in as many days. 

“I’m fine.” 

Kedric tries to bite back back a nasty retort- That she  _ isn’t _ fine, that she still has nightmares, that her arm and her face are held together with pins and luck, that he’ll chain her to the bed if she tears open her stitches one more damned time. 

“You’re a liar or an idiot.” 

Her blank shock makes the outburst worth it, for that moment, and her speechlessness allows him to carry on. 

“You aren’t fine. You look as if you’ll cry each time you stand up. You’re hallucinating. You’re still running a fever more days than not. If you’d like to kill yourself, by all means, use the airlock, but if you’d like to live, you need to stay in bed, stop being a selfish brat, and stop making my life difficult just to feel like you’ve still got control of the system.” 

As he stops to catch his breath, he realizes that was far too harsh.

Tamzin looks like he’s slapped her. 

He can’t bring himself to apologize. He turns away, digging for his needles and disinfectant, trying to decide if the heat in his chest is anger or shame. 

"I'm sorry." She says it so softly he can barely hear it.

He sees tears brimming in her eye when he returns with his supplies. She turns her face away to hide them, and after a moment's pause, he decides to pretend she succeeded. 

"You can rest in my bed. It's more comfortable." His own sort of apology, strained as it may be. "If you tear these again and bleed all over the bedding, though, I really will put you into space." 


	11. Chapter 11

Kedric tries to sleep in one of the chairs, as he has since she first came aboard, but his back aches so badly he can barely think, let alone sleep.

She watches him from where he’s put her, in a nest of blankets against the wall.

“There’s enough room for you, too.”

He balks, though she’s right. She’s tall, for a human, but she’s built like a reed, and she barely takes up one third of the bed.

“I didn’t want to impose…” Kedric begins to explain, but she’s already closed her eyes.

“You’ve had plenty of chances to impose, if you wanted to.” Tam rolled onto her back, groaning slightly in discomfort. “And if you touch me, heaven forbid, you might tear my stitches.”

He purses his lips at the implication, but he doesn’t give her the retort she wants. He just limps to his closet, pulling out a clean nightshirt before easing himself down on the edge of the bed.

Tamzin turns to look at him, and when she whispers, he can _hear_ the wicked smile in her voice.

“Perfect plan, doctor. Now I’ll have to climb on top of you if I want to get out of bed.”

He fumbles to find a pillow with his eyes still closed, dropping it onto her head and gently pushing her back to her own side.

“Behave, invalid, or you’ll sleep on the floor.”

 


	12. Chapter 12

They fall into a routine, wordlessly finding the ways they fit together, one broken piece at a time.

She sleeps on her back until her arm heals enough to let her roll onto her side, and he curls up beside her, a bulwark against the horrors of her dreams and the darkness beyond.

He wakes up with her head resting against his shoulder, some nights.

They whisper into the night like naughty children, sharing the soft confessions of the recent past. Their words dance around the dark corners: what had happened when the Light went dark, the screaming on the comms, the lifeless ghost shell sitting in a cupboard on the deck.

He tells her about the Titan’s departure. She laughs when he recounts the Exo forgetting her name, but falls silent when he said he had called her “sniper,” and how he’d hated that.

“I don’t like Guardians,” he confesses.

Tamzin is trying to flex the fingers on her injured arm as he speaks. He reaches out and covers her hand with his own, forcing her to stop with a gentle squeeze. She gives him a half-smile, sheepish at being caught, ducking her head to brush a kiss against his hand.

“You seem to like me well enough.”

It would be too cliché to say _you’re different_. He doesn’t want to admit that he could be wrong.

“Don’t flirt with your physician,” he chastises.

He doesn’t pull his hand away.


	13. Chapter 13

Mysticism and magic have never appealed to him, in the strictest sense.

Kedric watches his sister’s hands move, manipulating energy, biting her lip as she tries to concentrate. Her green eyes are aglow, and spark even brighter when she succeeds, dropping her spell and jumping up and down with glee.

“Look out, everyone.” Kedric smiles, enjoying the warmth of pride in his chest. “We’ve got the next Techeun in our midst.”

“It’s just a simple energy manipulation,” Jessa blushes with pleasure, even as she tries to minimize her feat. “It’s hardly enough to get that sort of attention.”

“You’re right, I suppose.” Kedric tosses a piece of fruit in the air, catching it in his hand as if getting a feel for the weight of it before throwing it at her. She fumbles the catch, yelping as it hits the floor. “Might as well give up and brush up on your housework. As long as you can get along with the other wives, I’m sure some scholar would love to have you.”

Jessa rolls her eyes at him, bending down to retrieve his missile.

“When are _you_ going to find a wife, anyways? Mother will probably die if you make her wait another century.”

“Isn’t producing parcels of Zao brats a job for the rest of you?” He raises a brow, biting into another piece of fruit, wiping the juice from his chin with his fingers. “Besides, I’m not getting married until I finish my studies.”

“Then finish, you ass.” She’s gathering her books, stacking them neatly on the table beside her favorite chair. “Mom will kick you out if you take much longer. Zee snitches every time you fail an exam.”

Kedric sighs loudly, flopping onto his back. The ceiling’s geometric designs turn slowly above him, the same patterns he’s watched from this floor for centuries.

“Maybe I’ll just be a medic,” he muses. “For now.”

“Settling for less when you’re only four courses from being a doctor? Mother will _love_ that.”

Jessa throws a pillow at him, but he catches it, holding his snack in his teeth as he throws it back with twice the force.

“Hey! You’re going to break something!”

“So? I’ll tell Mother you did it while playing witch in the parlor.”

He closes his eyes, tuning out his sister's voice, trying to isolate a decision that feels _right_ for once in his life.


	14. Chapter 14

The bandages come off.

Scars decorate her cheek, but the redness will fade in time. He traces the lines to her eye with his fingertips, and she confirms that she can feel it, that the nerves are back where they ought to be.

Her new eye is blue, bright, natural enough- Or it would be natural, if she were Awoken. Instead, it’s a cold star amid her earthen colors. Once the headaches and strain of using her new eye fade, it’s nearly forgettable, something to give him a pleasant shock when she meets his eyes.

She smiles when she sees that it startles him, taking pleasure in the novelty of catching him off-guard.

“I wonder if I’ll need a scope now.”

She sits up in bed, practicing her aim with an imaginary rifle, head tilted to sight an invisible enemy. “Just one second to aim, and bam! Headshot!”

Kedric watches her, smiling at her enthusiasm. She flinches when her pantomime triggers some ache in her side, though. He reaches out, putting a hand on her ribs, feeling the convulsing muscles beneath the skin.

“We’ll see.”

He doesn’t want to argue, and if he tells her that she won’t be taking headshots any time soon, there won’t be any way to avoid it.

The City has fallen, and the radio is no longer inundated with cries for help. Instead, there is word of a counter-strike.

Kedric watches Tamzin as the call plays on the radio. She seems ready to stand and demand he take her to Titan, and he braces himself for the fight.

Tamzin turns her back to him, instead, curling up against the wall, pretending to sleep.

That night, she picks nervously at the scabs on her arms and leg until they bleed. He silently tapes them up again, jaw set.

He stops leaving the radio on, after that.

She can’t leave. She won’t survive. Walking the length of the ship is still enough to exhaust her.

He can’t rid himself of the image of her staggering at some stab of pain on a battlefield, that grimace of discomfort crossing her beautiful face moments before a Cabal bullet finds her skull.


	15. Chapter 15

“I don’t care. You’re not getting off this ship.”

Kedric doesn’t even flinch when she throws the bowl at him. The stoneware shatters against the wall beside his head, the spoon landing on his lap. He brushes it off, not bothering to look at the mess on the floor.

“I can’t stay here! I need to go back and fight!” She’s nearly hoarse from screaming. Kedric hopes it’s a sign that her tantrum can’t last much longer. “You’re a coward. Your people always hide out here on the Reef while we fight the real war, and you have the nerve to tell me- To tell _me_ -”

He fails to mask a yawn, but Tamzin has reached her capacity for coherence, and all she can do is let out a wordless scream of frustration. It's almost cute, really. 

“You’re going to hurt yourself,” he sighs, resisting the urge to spin around in his chair. “I’d rather you do it before you hurt more of my ship, if it’s convenient for you.”

They had both known this storm would come, and for two hours, he has weathered it. He doesn’t entirely regret setting her off. Better this, a drawn-out explosion, than the tension they’ve endured for the past few days. Better to work out the heat of anger than swallow it, let it eat her from within. 

“You aren’t _listening_ to me!” Tamzin slams a fist into the wall, but then--

_Oh._

Kedric feels his stomach drop as he realizes it was her broken arm, so recently taken from the sling, still tender and full of pins and floating bone. She reels back with a strangled cry of pain, and he lurches forward, not fast enough to catch her.

She staggers to her knees, clutching her arm to her chest, gasping. He takes a breath, about to speak, ask if she's alright.

Tamzin begins to cry.

The sudden shift makes Kedric freeze. He feels like an idiot, staring blankly at the Guardian as the tears run down her face. She’s wailing, sobbing so hard her entire body convulses, and all he can do is gawk, aghast, as if she’s burst into flame instead of shown a shred of vulnerability.

Kedric finally shakes off his shock, sliding off of his chair, crawling the short distance to her. She screams when he reaches for her, a sound of anger and shame and frustration, turning away, grip tight on her own wrist. 

He disregards the shriek, taking hold of her shoulders, turning her to him. She's talking, but he can't understand a damn word. 

“Tamzin.” He says her name, firmly but gently. “Tamzin, come on. ”

“They’re all dying,” he manages to gleam from her broken sobs. “They’re all going to die, and I can’t save anyone. I can’t do anything.”

Kedric rests his forehead against hers, hands on her neck, her cheeks, trying to soothe her.

“Tamzin. No. No, my dear. You’re doing all you have to do." He feels a twist of guilt for denying her, now, but even these tears won't sway him. "Listen, Tamzin, listen to me.”

His thumb brushes the tears from her eyes, and her tears subside as he shushes her, their noses touching, his even exhales cool against her wet cheeks.

“You’ve saved me, do you hear?”

"Wh- What?" 

Her voice is soft, the question almost a hiccup. He takes advantage of her surprise, leaning in to kiss the tears from her cheeks, feeling the tension ease beneath his hands with each gentle brush of his lips. 

"I need you. I don't need you to sacrifice yourself, though. I need you to live, even if it's just for me." 

He whispers the words, stroking his thumbs across her cheeks, her throat.

"I'm the only person you need to save right now."

After the first kiss, her lips no longer taste like tears.


	16. Chapter 16

They live in a fool’s paradise in the weeks that follow.

If she were up and about, her arm would be back in a sling. They are not up and about, though, and so he coddles it for her, draping it across his side when they sleep, cradling it between them when they don’t.

They speak of his family, his past, and she laughs as he tells her about each sister in turn. Prin, the lucky Corsair. Zee, the high-strung academic. Jessa, the baby of the family, the little witch.

She doesn’t have a family, and when he presses her, he finds she doesn’t have anyone at all.

He traces a finger down a scar on her side as she tells him about the day her Ghost found her.

“I was in middle of the sea, suddenly, in the ruins of some arcology. I didn’t know anything. She told me I was a Guardian now, but she couldn’t tell me anything else.”

Tamzin closes her eyes, exhaling slowly as he finds a knotted muscle on her ribs, begins to gently work the tension out.

“That’s how we all are. Drifting into the City, nameless. Nothing but a Ghost and a gun, if we’re lucky.”

“How did you get your name, then?” He can’t quite hide the awe in his voice, imagining the terror of waking from the darkness with no memory of who he was before.

“I saw it in a book, once. I liked the way it sounds.” She shrugs, smiling slightly at his bafflement. “It’s a good name for a Warlock, don’t you think?”

 _You’re not a Warlock anymore_ , he doesn’t say.

He kisses her on the shoulder, on the throat, covering his dark thoughts with the fragility of her Lightless form.


	17. Chapter 17

If he had one wish, he’d have her forget the Tower, the City. He’d have her like this, forever, creamy skin and fiery hair on white sheets, sleeping in his arms, fingers tangled in his indigo curls. 

Instead, she slips from his arms to check the comms, at least once a day, and he follows like a moth to a flame, embracing her from behind as she listens for any news of the closest place she has to a home. 

Some days, there is news.

Most days, there is silence, save the sound of their own breathing. 

“They’re never going to get it back.” 

She’s leaning against the control panels, and Kedric stops at the words- Smiles at the spark of annoyance on her face at the interruption, before leaning in to kiss a corner of her worried mouth. 

“They might. Your people are very resourceful.” 

Tamzin shifts her weight, and he pauses, supports her, humming softly when she settles once more. 

“Will you stay, if they do?” 

It’s hardly a fair question to ask, in their current position, but she hesitates all the same, seriously considering her answer. He moves, stealing another kiss, grinning at her huff of pleasure.  

“Kedric--” 

She sighs, but he stays, savoring how warm she feels against him, the feeling of her fingers pressing into his shoulder. 

“I might go. But…” 

The distraction is too much, and for several minutes, she loses the train of thought, closing her eyes. 

“If I do… I’ll come back.”


	18. Chapter 18

The night the Light returns, she has fallen asleep in his arms.

He sits up with a book on his tablet, using one hand to tap each page, the other lightly massaging her scalp, enjoying the sensation of her hair between his fingers.

There’s a soft whirring noise, and at first, he presumes it’s some mechanism of the ship. It continues, however, until a little sphere pops out of a panel on the wall.

The panel where they’d put her dead Ghost.

Kedric stares, hand stilled on Tamzin’s head, as the tiny orb bobs around, trying to puzzle out its surroundings. When it finally sees him- and more importantly, his bedmate- it zooms over with a sound of excitement.

“Rho.” He whispers the name, putting a finger to his lips.

The quiet voice makes the Ghost pause, turning to look at him.

“Yes. Who are you?” Rho sound suspicious, but she keeps her voice low, glancing toward her unconscious Warlock.

“Kedric.” He smiles, a bit sadly, placing his other hand on Tamzin’s shoulder. She makes a soft sound, moving closer to him before settling into sleep once more. “Let her rest.”

“It doesn’t look like you’ve been resting.” The Ghost pointedly scans his bare chest. Kedric glances down at the fresh scratches on his chest before looking back at Rho, raising a brow in return.

With a soft sigh that could be resignation or disapproval, The Ghost retreats.

Kedric is left with a hollow feeling in his chest. He shifts onto his side, holding Tamzin tightly, face buried in her hair.

He’s certain he’ll never sleep, but he does.

When the morning comes, she touches his cheek, and says, “Did you have a bad dream? You were crying.”

Kedric smiles, kissing her slowly, wondering if this will be the last time.

The Light consumes her.

Immortality feels cold to the touch.


End file.
